How To Effectively Trap A Mouse
by sctwilightvampwolfgal
Summary: If you wanted to capture a mouse inside a mouse trap, first you had to know what or who the mouse liked and would risk everything for. *Minor Season Three Spoilers.* *Written for Multimouse Appreciation Week Day Two.*


The only way to really catch a mouse in a mouse trap is to trap something that the mouse would be willing to lose everything for. For most mice, it is cheese, though the thought of cheese is not something that would mean everything to Multimouse; Plagg might succumb to that, but he's a cat and not a mouse.

Multimouse couldn't breathe past the lump in her throat that seemed to drag her down. She was small right now, but she couldn't help but long to rush over and see if he's okay. She wouldn't mind being the one to go and save him, rather than sending one of her many clones.

She knows that it is a trick, that this is baiting at its worst, but Multimouse meets green eyes that tell her to just do something else, and she can't think of that something else, not when Cat Noir is trapped. Multimouse would do anything to save her partner, and perhaps that's where the effectiveness of the mouse trap comes in. Cat Noir is her best friend, her partner, and he always has her back, whether he's been forced to fight crime in a banana suit or has Ladybug or another version of the same holder saving him.

Multimouse can't just let his ring be stolen, not if that reveals to Hawkmoth, Cat Noir's identity, and especially if that means Cat Noir can no longer be a superhero. She knows without a doubt just how much he loves being Cat Noir, and it's not only because he can work alongside Ladybug. It's a part of who he is; it doesn't matter that she'd give him a permanent, new Miraculous if he couldn't be Cat Noir; she surely wouldn't leave him to have no Miraculous, even if most probably would after that.

He's her partner in a way that no one else can take or be. Multimouse catches her breath and hurries into the trap. She doesn't look back even as she uses her yoyo to knock the hand away that had been inching towards his Miraculous.

"Multimouse," Cat Noir takes a deep breath before lowering his voice even more, "Marinette, you don't have to do this for me. I'll be fine." His attempt at a smile puts knots not just in her throat but in her stomach.

"No, I had to." She retorts; she can't believe that he doesn't see the desperation of the situation.

Cat Noir's eyes just meet hers, and within their green depths is a level of apology, a sincere one, that she would never have expected. He didn't want her to risk her identity or her powers for him. It eases some of the knots and warms up her stomach.

"Come on," She murmurs still thinking of a plan before she sends her other selves to distract the Akuma and hopefully find them a way out. It didn't help that the cage had tightened around them when she'd slipped in. Cat had already used his Cataclysm and couldn't detransform here to recharge, even if she hid him.

"Oh," She murmurs as she directs the attention of her fox Miraculous wielding self to create an illusion around them. If they couldn't see them here and thought that they were in another cage, Cat Noir could recharge and Cataclysm their way out.

"Cat," She turns towards him, "Recharge, so that you can Cataclysm this mouse trap." She realized belatedly that it probably should have been called a cat trap, because it had went around Cat Noir. Her face turned red as she realized that an implication of calling it a mouse trap was the fact that she either valued Cat Noir as the sustenance that kept her alive like mice value cheese, as someone very important, or as something not unlike a tasty treat. Those feelings implied were not what she wanted to think about and think through right now. Her face couldn't be redder, she was sure, even if she had been talking to Adrien right now and stammering over her words.

"Then, you should probably turn around, Marinette. Or else, you'll know this Cat's identity too."

She was wrong; now embarrassment made her face flame up, so she turned around and stared at the illusion, making sure that nothing tarnished its illusion. Multimouse wondered if it was okay that every now and again, he addressed her by her civilian name, soft enough that the villains could never hear it.

At least the illusion held while Cat Noir recharged and transformed back, though it always felt like an odd surge of energy to be by another Miraculous holder when he transformed. It nearly tickled all of her nerves as she stood up, and they moved back into the fray, eager to defeat the Akuma that left them trapped together, a mouse with her cat.


End file.
